Alcohol-powered micro fuel cell could one day power your smartphone

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Engineers have been struggling for years to develop some new breakthrough idea that will push battery technology to the next level. Instead, we’ve been stuck with iterative improvements that limit the power and usefulness of our mobile devices. Perhaps batteries aren’t the right way to go at all, though. A doctoral researcher at Aalto University in Finland has developed a prototype of a highly efficient micro fuel cell that runs on alcohol. Maybe in the future when you swing by the bar for a drink, you’ll also be able to top off your phone.

We’re used to hearing about fuel cell technology in motor vehicles, but at the most basic level, fuel cells are simply a way to generate electricity. There’s no reason a fuel cell cant work in a mobile device, and the high energy density would make it potentially far superior to a lithium-ion battery. It’s just a matter of making the cell small and durable enough to ride around in a smartphone in your pocket all day.

The Aalto University fuel cell was designed by Gianmario Scotti for his doctoral dissertation. Like larger fuel cells, the micro cell consumes alcohol and oxygen, outputting water, carbon dioxide, and of course, electricity. It’s able to run on either methanol or ethanol, but the latter is preferable. Not only is ethanol easier to produce with our current energy infrastructure, it comes with minimal health hazards (this is the alcohol we can consume safely in moderation). Methanol, by contrast, is highly toxic when ingested, and is also a skin irritant.

The cell designed by Scotti is a tiny aluminum wafer just 14 mm2 and less than a millimeter thick. Using a picosecond laser allowed Scotti to fabricate the cell using aluminum rather than the more common silicon, which helped to reduce the cost and weight. Despite its small size, supplying it with alcohol outputs 0.5 volts — hydrogen can produce a full volt, but is far less practical. A few of these cells wired up in series would provide enough juice to keep your phone running. Then it’s just matter of keeping the reservoir supplied with reactants.

Scotti discusses in his dissertation the best way to refill a micro fuel cell like the one he’s designed. The system would need to be kept clean, so you wouldn’t just pop it open and pour some ethanol in. A pump or capillary action could be used to recharge the cell, but either method would be much faster than plugging a battery into the wall. Air (oxygen) is required for the reaction, so air quality might be more troublesome than the alcohol component. In regions with high particulate levels in the atmosphere, the fuel cell could become clogged and fail to function. So taking your micro fuel cell phone to Beijing might leave you without power, and no amount of booze is going to fix it.

Powering smartphones is really just the most consumer-facing use for micro fuel cells. Scotti suggests that these same devices could be of use with micro-satellites, which need to keep weight down for launch and only remain in orbit for a limited time. As for when these power sources might find their way into mobile devices, Scotti says it could be anywhere from 1-10 years. Until then, you’ll just have to fill yourself with alcohol instead of your phone.

Fuel cells again? They keep doing press releases for as long as i can remember (at least since 1970) and it never goes anywhere.

dc

A lot of tech is like that.

Having said that, while I too tire of re-hash events such as this (graphene is much the same), Honda and Toyota are selling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California this year and claim that Japan is going all hydro. if so this stuff might finally get some traction.

http://www.korioi.net/ Korios

Do you remember the alcohol based micro-motor chargers from some 15-20 years ago? Although they clearly worked apparently the market thought they could not make much money out of them and killed them off.

dc

Yeah back in 2002 Arnold Schwarzenegger had a hydrogen fuel cell powered Hummer. It didn’t happen then, but with Toyota finally behind it, it looks like that may change.

http://www.korioi.net/ Korios

We have been hearing for “huge breakthroughs” in liquid based “batteries” for at least the last 20 years and not a single device ever reached commercial deployment. Until market forces see a value in this tech and implement it massively it will remain in R&D prototypes stage. And that is never going to happen if they do not fully control the tech.

SpideyBry

All I know is my phone will get the cheap stuff. The top shelf stuff is only for me. ;-)

SpideyBry

All I know is my phone will get the cheap stuff. The top shelf stuff is only for me. ;-)

RBH

Toshiba were supposedly going to release a fuel cell for laptops in 2007. The pre-release propaganda was showing cigarette lighter sized canisters of methanol but they didn’t show the phonebook sized fuel cell.

Best of luck to them, but fuel cells have been promising a lot for a long time and in consumer land they haven’t hit anywhere yet.

jeff b

If the fuel cell could just charge the device that would suffice, the actual demand could be supported by Li battery……why isn’t this tech hear already?

Xennex1170

I heard the problem with fuel cells for mobile devices is what to do with the water that is produced which electronics don’t seem to like. :P

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